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BRAZZAVILLE, June 28 (AFP) - Legislators backing Congo's President Denis Sassou Nguesso won an absolute majority in the second round of elections, according to official results published late Thursday by Interior Minister General Pierre Oba.

The results from Sunday's voting showed Sassou Nguesso's supporters in the Congolese Labour Party and several allied movements winning 43 seats out of the 78 up for grabs in the second round.

Nineteen seats went to independents, eight to the opposition and the remainder to small political groupings.

Among the opposition parties winning seats was Andre Milongo's Union for Democracy and the Republic (UDR) with a total of six seats, two of them from the first round held on May 26. The UDR becomes the main opposition force.

In the first round government supporters won 40 out of 51 seats, giving them an absolute majority of 83 seats in the new 137-seat assembly.

The remaining eight deputies are to be chosen shortly when security conditions enable voting to be held in the southern Pool region, where the army is fighting a militia force whose leader has refused to lay down his arms since the 1990s.

Meanwhile the main opposition grouping, the Convention for Democracy and Salvation (CODESA) headed by Milongo, said it would boycott local and municipal elections due Sunday "because of generalised fraud."

In a statement received by Nampa-AFP, CODESA said it was withdrawing because of "manipulation of the results" of the legislative elections and "the low turnout in these elections."
- Nampa-AFP

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